‘Work that leads to joy’: White men who recognize privilege, fight racism

The focus of Black History Month is and always should be the achievements of Black Americans. But if you’d consider being radically inclusive for a moment, I’d like to give a shoutout to some white men this year. This is a necessary exception because the continued segregation of white and Black Americans’ shared history on Native American land is robbing all Americans of a comprehensive telling of our past, creating lots of misinformation in our present, and threatening our hopes for a more united tomorrow.

This lack of historical integration limits our knowledge of each other and creates fears and divisions that truth and proximity can help us heal. 

One week after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer, two white men from Pennsylvania wanted to see things change. They decided that change would start with them. Kevin Eppler and Jay Coen Gilbert gathered more than 100 white men from across the country for a video conference about how they could learn to have a role in dismantling racism and the culture and systems of white supremacy that reside within themselves, their communities, and their country. 

That kicked off White Men for Racial Justice (WMRJ), a brave space for white men to unlearn misconceptions and prejudices and to learn ways to show up in multicultural spaces with skills that could help them engage within and across racial lines using curiosity, not judgment.

An earlier example

In 1946, physicist and Nobel laureate Albert Einstein, who was also a member of the NAACP, spoke at Lincoln University, a historically Black college. As Isabel Wilkerson records in her book “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” he said, “The separation of the races is not a disease of the colored people, but a disease of the white people.” WMRJ is addressing this long-standing need that has plagued our society.  

“For many white men, our first instinct is to say, ‘I’m not a racist,’” says Mr. Eppler, “but we don’t know what we don’t know. … We assume and accept many things in our society as normal. … There’s so much we don’t question.” 

A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Mr. Eppler has studied extensively the intersection of religion and social justice and has worked as a curriculum designer for organizations wanting to build racial and cultural competency within their workplaces. “I know Black, Latin American, and feminist liberation theologies, but I had never examined myself critically,” he says. “I had never asked myself the ways I could be carrying around a white supremacist’s mindset. … I was unaware of the cultural influence white supremacy had on me.”

Mr. Eppler; Mr. Gilbert, co-chair of the business-led change network Imperative 21; and dozens of volunteers offer online training sessions, online and in-person peer circles, and immersion weekends that focus on issues of racial justice. During these programs, white men share perspectives they’ve long held, ask questions they’ve felt they couldn’t ask, and practice skills that can help them have more constructive conversations about racial issues with white people and people of color.

“Our workplaces and communities are more diverse,” says Mr. Eppler, who grew up on the white side of Baltimore and now lives in a racially diverse community. “Racial justice, equity, and diversity are part of today’s conversations. … Many white men worry about saying the wrong thing.”

Central to WMRJ’s program is a practice from liberation theology that calls for reflection on the world’s structures and the ways those structures might be oppressive. “Our actions must be informed by deep reflection,” says Mr. Eppler. “At WMRJ, that looks like a continuous cycle of reflection that leads to action, that leads to reflection on that action that influences the next action.” 

A community of practice

Providing opportunities to participate in informed action is part of WMRJ’s mission. Its members are assigned to peer circles based on their geographic location, allowing the men to work as a group on racial justice issues in their area. “We’ve had men go to school board meetings to support the teaching of a more complete racial history of our country,” says Mr. Eppler. “We’ve funded and participated in a conference on racial reparations, encouraging our churches, synagogues, and meetinghouses to come, learn, and participate in the discussion. In another location, some men are involved in a city’s gun violence conversations. Issues of race were being discussed and immigrant populations were becoming a target.”

WMRJ’s curriculum includes works from African American, Native American, and Australian Aboriginal writers and educators. Staffed by volunteers, WMRJ pays its equity advisers, Black professionals who collaborate on the curriculum and help facilitate workshops and weekend immersion experiences. “They challenge us so that we don’t become a book club,” says Mr. Eppler. “It’s not just learning about voter suppression; it’s also what are we doing to fight against it.”

WMRJ has received some pushback for being a group exclusively for white men, but as Mr. Eppler explains, “We have to do our own work.” Often the lone white man at workshops about racial justice, he notes, “One of the advantages of our program is that we don’t have to get everything right in this space. Here we can wrestle with our perspectives alongside others who are wrestling. We hear statistics and can look at evidence that doesn’t feed into narratives we’ve long held on to. … Why hadn’t I learned about redlining, …why didn’t I know that the GI Bill that my grandfather and my father received was systemically denied to Black veterans?”

Closing in on its third year, WMRJ has garnered more than 400 men into its ongoing community of practice. “We’re not giving out certificates or degrees,” says Mr. Eppler. “The work of racial justice is lifelong work. And it’s work that leads to joy. That’s not a word commonly used to describe working on issues of racial justice, but it’s the joy that comes from authentic relationships, … from learning new ways to relate to people, … from being able to laugh at ourselves, … from telling our stories without being judged.” 

For me, at least this year, Black History Month is not only the recognition of Black achievement. It’s also an acknowledgment of those who are working to end the segregated telling of America’s history that makes Black History Month a necessity.